Category: flash fiction

AI

Enter the matrix baby!

Love it or hate it, it is here to stay.

So, you may have noticed a spike in your site hits since back end of last year, often from Singspore. That is ai linked as they need feeding. they’ve voracious consumers of information, and WordPress is getting scraped relentlessly, and its hardly surprising given how much of the Internet it hosts.

Anyway, that got me to thinking, given its been reading me so much, and I was dabbling with prompt generation, I asked it to prompt me a prompt that might get my juices flowing.

This was its response.

It is overly kind as it is prone to be, but ill take that. The prompt was decent too.

Bring on skynet! I love my robot overlords…

George and Alice

The old clock in the hall struck seven as George sat down at his writing table as he did every night. He opened the drawer and took out the pen she had given him on their 25th anniversary, then carefully took a sheet of the finest paper from a sheath and placed it on the desk in front of him.

He rolled the pen between his fingers and smiled as he read the inscription:

“My heart remains yours always.”

He pulled his chair to the desk, made himself comfortable and began to write.

My dearest Alice

Winter has come at last it seems, and the days grow shorter and we have had the first flakes of snow this evening.

Fortunately I have a good store of wood this year, and the new people on the Henderson farm have assured me they have plenty to spare should I run short. They seem very nice, though I am not quite sure they are cut out for this life. Time will tell.

I took a walk by the river this morning, the air cold and crisp and the skies blue with the feintest whisper of cloud. Sadly the old bridge we built at Millers crossing has collapsed, and I fear age would insist that I am now well beyond repairing it.

Such memories it brought back and I remembered the yellow dress you wore the day we finished it. It seems like only yesterday, and the smile you wore with it remains with me to this day. As time passes it’s funny the things we remember and those we forget. The smallest details of our life together I still recall and yet major events now seem like a story told to me by someone else.

Sometimes I do wonder whether I have forgotten days we spent together, yet my heart remains full of those that are still so clear to me.

My heart remains yours always

George

Gently placing the pen on the desk George then folded the paper and placed it in an envelope that he pulled from the bottom drawer. Sealing it he then took a bundle of identical envelopes and slowly unknotted the string that bound them together.

Taking up the pen he wrote ‘Alice’ on the front and then bundled it with the others, refastening them together with the old coarse string and placing them back in the drawer.

He smiled as he stood from the desk, pushed the chair back in and turned out the light.

It had been a good day, she would have enjoyed it he thought smiling to himself as he climbed the stairs to bed.

Cancer stuff

An update of sorts

I’ve written a few times about having cancer, but nothing for a while. I think last update was when I was about to have treatment, which was back end of last year now. You can read about that here.

Anyway, I had treatment and then waited. I recuperated at home for a while, but on the whole it went pretty well. I took a few months of work, wore pyjamas a lot, drank many litres of water a day (to help flush the radiation of something like that)and waited. I had Brachytherapy, which is not particularly nasty on the body. It doesn’t make your hair fall out or any such thing – though I did shave my head because I thought it would be funny. Apparently I need to grow up because I did like seeing some peoples reactions.

Apparently I am also a massive dickhead.

Anyway, mostly I am just waiting and waiting now. I have tests every 6 months, and the numbers are looking good. I cannot go in an MRI machine now as my prostate is full of around 100 radioactive pellets which would be ripped out by the electromagnets – which sounds ghastly, right?

The long and short of it is that I don’t have to have any more treatment as it stands, which is fab news, and eventually I will hopefully hit the numbers I need to in my PSA tests and all will be declared well.

So mostly I don’t think about it much right now, other than to still want to remind all and sundry that if you are 50 and have a prostate then you need to get checked regularly. Seriously, just do it, it might well save your life or the life of someone you love…

Do it!

Darla

Flash fiction kinda stuff…

This is in response to my own prompt. The pics below were the inspiration and the prompt title was “Darla”

Prompt Here!

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Darla was born in that timeless perineum of vague uncertainty and half eaten boxes of chocolates that occupies the days between Christmas eve and New years day. A place where time marches to the unfathomable beat of a dozen drunken drummers all attempting to play synchronised opening beats to Phil Collins’ ‘In the air tonight’ whilst being chased by killer clowns demanding they hurry up and get to the good bit.

As a large proportion of the world lurched between one bout of searing indigestion to the next, Darla came screaming into the world, perfectly pink and with a dark shock of hair that her mother claimed was surely from the gods, as she herself was blonde. The midwife’s suggestions that it was surely on the father’s side were dismissed out of hand as Darla’s mother insisted to the contrary as there was the small matter of an unwavering assertion that she had never slept with anyone to allow her to conceive. But who is going to listen to a teen mother with a tendency towards tie dye and tarot? No one, that is how many. Precisely no one at all.

And it was with that unwavering belief in her divine conception that Darla grew up. It did not make for easy friendships, whether she professed her beliefs from the rood tops or whispered it in darker corners was irrelevant, it simply followed her without the need for any effort on her part. As they bobbed along on the ebb and flow of life their past was impossible to completely leave behind, regardless of which small town they were soon packing up from or washing ashore on.

And it was in one of those small towns, which shall remain nameless as it is of interest to only for those flotsam and jetsam of humanity who found themselves floundered there, that Darla found herself when the end came. Or perhaps, when the end came for her.

In those final moments, most things burned and many other things collapsed. A third lot of things exploded into a sparkling cascade of death whilst everything not in categories one, two or three tended to whimper into oblivion with scant resistance. Had it not been so terrifying and cataclysmic it might have even been beautiful.

Darla took a deep breath and pulled her satchel across her shoulder. The skies crackled and spat like embers whipped by the wind, and she thought about her mother, and the stories of how she came from the gods. It had all been too much for mum, and she wouldn’t miss this place or these people.

It was time to leave, they would be here for her soon.

Dad was on his way…

Last night – 101 word challenge

A 101 word post challenge

“So this is it then?” Clarke asked.

“Yes” the voice replied, “this time tomorrow it’ll all be over.”

“For everyone?”

“Everybody Clarke, this is how it ends, I told you that.”

“After all we’ve achieved though?”

The voice paused. “I think perhaps you overestimate man’s achievements.”

“If you ask me it’s a real waste,” Clarke said pointing to the ribbon of fire that filled the sky before him. “Just look at that sunset.”

“That’s the sun about to engulf the planet Clarke” the voice said quite calmly.

“Oh yeah, right,” Clarke replied.

“Now go home and say goodbye,” the voice said.

Muchies – 101 word challenge

101 words to conjour up an image of some sort…

Granville sat back, chemical pleasure coursing through his veins.

“Food” he thought grabbing a large bag of crisps pushing handfuls of day glow orange goodness into his mouth.

“Oh so good” he said as his mind did a triple somersault and the television turned into a Shetland pony. “Soooo good”.

Handful after handful he shovelled into his cavernous mouth until they were all gone, his fingers thick with their dust.

“Eat them” shouted the Shetland mounting a mermaid that had 5 minutes earlier been a coat rack.

“Then join us” she said winking.

Granville grinned, opened his mouth and bit down…

Denial – Room 101

101 words

These used to be 101 words. Sometimes they still are, like this one. Sometimes not. They are often snippets, occasionally unfinished and sometimes simply the beginnings of something for another time. Mostly though they are just whatever…

The sea of smiling faces turned as the doors opened slowly, the first strains of the organ playing.

She was a vision in white but all he could feel was rage. Rage at the thing inside her, the thing that bound him to her. Rage at how they valued nothing but money, and who saw him as merely another thing to be possessed.

She smiled at her sister as she approached, another vacuous thing living only to please their rich daddy. “I should choke her too,” he thought to himself smiling.

The music stopped as she took his hand.

“You look beautiful darling.”


You look beautiful

The In-between – Part 1 of 31

Where lots of things start and end

So throwback Friday is apparently a thing. I can’t believe it’s 5 years ago now, but in 2018 I did what ended up being almost a book’s worth of writing in a month. It started with this tiny little snippet in response to a prompt. I keep thinking that I need to go back to it and rewrite it and get it into the book that it could or should have been. I might do that…

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Okay so I’m doing M’s prompts and going to try and do a full month as one long story with no planning. The first was titled ‘The Inbetween’ so thats the name of the story. Each prompt is only meant to take a few minutes. Let’s see how it goes.

I’m not sure what I am anymore. I know I’m dead, I remember that all too well, but it was hardly the significant finale I was expecting.

There were no pearly gates or lights to head towards, and neither was there fire nor brimstone nor the anguished gnashing of teeth – something Mrs Henderson next door would most certainly be disappointed about given her insistence that one day my wicked ways would most certainly be repaid in true Old Testament fashion.

The way she always looked at me when she said it I’m pretty sure she meant buggery, she just had that look of a woman who feared buggery above all things. Her husband was a big man, so that may have explained it.

So alas Mrs Henderson I am afraid there is a distinct lack of buggery wherever it is that I am, though there are rather a lot of us here in-between who are somewhat in need of an answer as to just what is going on.

Part 2 is here

Stars – Room 101

quickie for u

101 words. Ish…

“You smell like strawberries,” Carl said smiling, running his hand through her hair.

Helen’s heart raced being so close to him, lying in the grass, head on his chest. They’d only been together for a few months but she’d never felt like this before.

He raised a hand and pointed to a cluster of stars. “See there, straight up from that tree, the three stars in a line? That’s Orion’s Belt.”

“Where did you learn about that?” she asked, sighing.

“My dad used to take us out camping as kids, he loved the stars.” He said wrapping his arms around her.

____________________________

I know, no twist or anything macabre or weird or twisted or offensive. I’m half way through this challenge I think and thought I would make the lack of a twist the twist. I could have had him be an alien, or murder her or have a satellite fall on them or worse but some days, it’s just nice to be nice 😊

Jupiter Glow – 101 words

Jupiter…you beauty

101 words. Sometimes a few more. Sometimes a start, or an end, or a middle…

No matter how hard they try they can never prepare you for the loneliness of space. The fellows in the white coats test you and explore the extent to which your mind can be pushed. but they really have no idea what true isolation will do to you.
You try to retain a degree of positivity but there comes a point when you lose all hope, and for me that point was when I flashed past Mars with my pod still accelerating. Mars was my last hope you see, my salvation. If anyone could have survived the Orion onslaught it was those tough bastards on the red planet, but with my emergency beacon out and navigation systems shot I simply sailed by into the inky black of space.
I doubt it mattered though because there were no signs of life on my scanners. In fact, there had been no sign in any quadrant since I jettisoned at the battle of Ceres Outpost. Whilst I had enough supplies to keep me going for a few months – assuming the hydro-recycle unit on my suit keeps functioning – I doubt that I will make it through the asteroid belt to see the glow of Jupiter.
It’s a shame really, because my god she is a sight to behold…

Harvest – Room 101

another quickie

101 words. Sometimes a beginning, sometimes an end. Or even a frustratingly pointless middle.

“Are they ready?” Drax asked as they passed silently through space in the shadow of the moon.

“They are” replied Altama. She spread her tentacles and began to purr as she bathed in the glorious warmth of the sun.

“Anything to be concerned over?”

She laughed and watched him unfurl, his flesh pulsing iridescent as he warmed after so long in the cold of deep space.

“No. They are ready to be harvested.”

So many lifetimes had passed in getting here, and now he felt suddenly alive. Suddenly hungry.

“Good” Drax replied as he turned towards Earth. “It’s time to feed.“

Date night – 101 words

A quickie before bed

101 words. Sometimes a beginning, sometimes an end. Or even a frustratingly pointless middle.

With rain running down her face Maria smiled as she remembered that first meeting. Mother said that she’d know when she met the one. Mother was right.

She loved his charm, that assured way he walked over and god, that confidence. Her pulse still raced at the thought, the way he looked at her with those dark eyes and the things she felt when he placed his hand unexpectedly on her arm. He was intoxicating and too delicious to resist.

“I wonder if he has a brother?” She thought, tipping the final shovel of soil over his face and walking away…

Waiting…101 word challenge

101 words to try create a wee something…

101 words. Sometimes a beginning, sometimes an end. Or even a frustratingly pointless middle.

Night fell, the full moon streamed through the slits in the ragged curtains. Jessica pulled the blankets over her face and waited. Adrenaline coursed through her, fear gripping her tight as she picked out cautious footsteps crunching through the coarse gravel outside her window.

“She’s inside,” she heard Monsignor whisper.

“We need to hurry,” came a reply. It was her father.

Floorboards creaked as she watched the moonlight crawl slowly up the bed towards her. Her heartbeat slowed, her eyes narrowed and she lowered the blanket, smiling.

“On three,” came her father’s voice outside the door.

Jessica was ready in two…

Another life

Some things are best forgotten

Amos sat in the old rocker, looking out across the open fields in front of the farm house. He watched wisps of clouds dancing across the sky and jet trails slowly dissolving into the blue and remembered a time, long ago now, when he was more than the frail old man now living out the last of his days watching the seasons pass from his window. Snippets of another life he was no longer sure were even his.

“You see that, girl?” he said, looking over at a canary is a small cage on a dresser next to the window. “You see those vapour trails? That was me once.”

The small yellow bird cheeped almost as if in response.

His eyes weren’t what they once were but he could still make out the feint outline of the city in the distance and he watched as shuttles, from this distance mere specks, took off and headed upwards towards the east pacific low orbit station.

There was a flash of silver as the sun caught the side of a large long haul transporter rising slowly upwards and he remembered, not at all fondly, the early days long before anti-grav when they had to strap you to a rocket just to get you into orbit. He didn’t miss the take offs, but he each landing was fresh in his mind as the day he had made them.

“Good times,” he mumbled to himself, rolling a small red rock no larger than a thumbnail between his fingers. A memento of his last trip to Mars smuggled home, and his most prized possession. He rocked slowly and pulled a blanket over his knees. He looked at it and his eyes lit up and a smile spread across his face. He had kept it locked away for decades but today, today he wanted to hold it. It was softer to the touch than he remembered, perhaps from being kept in the old cigarette tin in the dresser for so long.

“I went there you know,” he told his canary. He had told her uncountable times but he didn’t know that, not anymore. His once sharp mind was now a lottery when it came to the things he remembered and the things he did not. “I saw sunrise over the Martian planes, long before we stopped going there after what happened, and trust me, it was a sight to behold. Miles of red, like a sea of blood stretched out before us.”

The canary cleaned her feathers, then hopped down to the bottom of the cage.

“Oh yes,” he continued proudly, fragments of past glories now darting about his mind. “I was a real American hero. We even had a parade in thirty seven.”

The canary chirped again, and then for a second time, as Amos suddenly stiffened, a look of pain etched across his face. His right arm reached for his chest and the small rock fell from his hand. Amos gasped as the bird continued to call loudly. Amos was now in full cardiac arrest. His hands clenched into fists as the life ebbed slowly from his body, his eyes glazing over, and with a final gasp, Amos McCartney drifted into nothing.

And with that final gasp, his body now relaxed the chair rocked forwardm crushing the small rock fragment. Red dust smeared on the carpet beneath the runner of the old rocking chair. The canary chirped wildly, hopping up to the small wooden perch and then back to the cage floor, but there was nobody to hear it or heed it’s warnings.

Slowly, spreading out from the spot under the chairm a red stain began to creep. It first engulfed the chair and Amos, turning them a dark ochre red, and moments later the flesh and plaid blanket on his knees suddenly collapsed into dust. The canary flapped wildly, flying around the small cage panicked.

Outwards, it then began to spread, devouring all before it and turning everything it touched to ocre dust, and in a moment, the chirps of the canary were silenced…

Prompts – Foolish

Just a few words with no real reason

Going to try do prompts this month. Kind of stream of consciousness stuff as I don’t have time for all that planning or editing lark. Am aiming for about 1000 words a day. Let’s see how it goes. They may be dross, but sometimes it is just fun to write and see what comes out without too much thinking…

First up is Fandango’s One Word Challenge.. The inspirational word was ‘Foolish’.

Ok so I cant find his post now.

Go see his site instead. Its pretty cool and full of loads of stuff.

https://fivedotoh.com/

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Dawn crept slowly across the horizon, silver slivers of light devoured the darkness as the sun fought to escape the prison of the thick clouds that hung low in the sky. The incessant crash of waves on the shale beach reminded Alyssa of the endless barbs in his words that tore and pulled at the threads of her sanity for as long as she could remember.   

Certainly nothing seemed to exist before him, with his sweet charms and promises of happy ever afters. Nothing ever mattered since that moment when she walked away from all she had known and gave herself to the thought of those tomorrow’s so full of love and life.

“If you love me, “ she could still hear him saying. And she did, God how she loved him.

“Always and forever,” she would say, even when her mouth was filled with the sting of metallic and the bruises turned yellow beneath the long sleeves and high necked blouses.

Standing here now, the waves lapping at her feet, rounded pebbles rolled back into the waves as the sea retreated to safety around her.

The wind was cold as it danced around her bare legs, tugging at her long dark hair as it cascaded down across her shoulders, and was then suddenly whipped around her face as the wind gusted in from across the bay.

High above a single gull circled, and she swore that she heard him in the waves calling her to come to him. Alyssa looked back up the beach as the pale morning light played off the high cliffs behind her, and she watched as her clothes were tossed up and blown into the thick gorse that lined the edge of the beach

“It hurts, “ she heard him say, “deep inside, it hurts so much.”

Alysssa clutched her stomach, feeling his pain, a smile breaking out across her lips.

“You did this, “ he shouted as the wind gusted, white horses topping the waves as they crashed onto the shore and pulled at her legs.

She could taste it on her lips, and his lips on hers, both bitter and deadly

This was his place, his refuge, his evermore, and now only the rage of the storm remained where once he lived so violently.

Prompts – Venue

Not sure where this came from…

Going to try do prompts this month. Kind of stream of consciousness stuff as I don’t have time for all that planning or editing lark. Am aiming for about 1000 words a day. Let’s see how it goes. They may be dross, but sometimes it is just fun to write and see what comes out without too much thinking…

First up is Fandango’s One Word Challenge.. The inspirational word was ‘Venue’.

FOWC with Fandango — Venue

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Snow fell slowly and settled on the cold hard ground as the moon climbed high above the city, her bright lights and pulsating neon signs silent in the distance. Clad in steepling steel and concrete, she was a cruel mistress, wringing every ounce of good intention from those she took to her breast, and making them bend to her irresistible will just to survive.

The clang of steel on rock rang out and a heavy set man, draped in a thick dark coat, cursed as he shovelled reluctant clods of frozen earth into a growing pile.

“Next time maybe you bring two shovels,“ he said, breathing heavily and peeling off his coat, throwing it to a smaller man who was leaning up against the side of a battered 1972 Ford Pinto drawing deeply on a cigarette. The orange glow lit up his sharp features and deep set eyes.

“Hey, watch the wheels, “ he said, catching the coat and placing it on the roof of the car. The Pinto had been a thing of beauty once, long ago, with her smooth curves, emerald green paint and heavy steel fenders.

Now, the only good thing about her was the size of her trunk. Easily big enough for a grown man. Two at a push.

“Shuddup Benny, I don’t see why I always have to dig the holes.”

“Romeo – you know full well that is on account of my back,” said Benny. “Never been the same since Krakow, you remember that, right? Saved your life in that shit storm. Twice as I recall. Remember the place – lovely little venue for a shootout.”

Romeo continued to shovel the cold dirt. “He still alive in there?” he asked.

Benny took out his keys and opened the trunk of the Pinto and a cascade of profanity spilled out into the night, he then slammed it closed again, locking it once more.

“Yup,“ said Benny, finishing the cigarette and tossing the glowing butt into the hole. “Alive and kicking. Easiest ten thousand we’ve ever made.”

Romeo looked up In mid shovel.

“What?” protested Benny, a mischievous grin on his face. “Come on, keep digging, it’s cold out. Shallow will be fine.”

Romeo exploded. “Its Fucking frozen, FROZEN. You wanna try?”

“What you suggesting,” said Benny, “Think we should just let him go. Leave him to wander off, leave him to the cayotes? All because the ground’s a bit frozen?”

Romeo paused for a moment.

“You’re right, he’s gonna get what’s coming to him, he ain’t getting no favours. He’s a piece of shit and I wouldn’t jizz on him if he was on fire, he needs to …”

“Mother fucking what did you just say?” said Benny bursting into fits of laughter.

“That he has to pay?”  

“Sweet baby Jesus, no, what you talking about jizzing on him?” said Benny, almost bent double, tears streaming down his face.

“It’s a saying,” said Romeo, brow furrowed and feeling even more annoyed. “I wouldn’t jizz on him if he was on fire…”

Benny fell back, collapsed against the Pinto.

“Piss, “ he said between gasps and laughter. “You wouldn’t PISS on him. It’s piss”

Romeo leaned on his shovel, glaring at Benny.

“It is not,“ he said, “It’s jizz. It’s about not wasting jizz.”

Benny creased up, barely able to breathe.

“Why would you…fuck Romeo…” was all Benny could manage.

“Piss isn’t a waste,“ Romeo continued, quite seriously. “No one cares about wasting piss. Throw piss on a fire and it might smell but that’s not a sin like wasting jizz. I’m a good Catholic boy Benny, we don’t waste our jizz like you protestants. Especially not on things on fire.”

Benny slid down the side of the car onto the ground, hysterical and clutching his stomach.

“Oh just give me the fucking keys,“ Romeo insisted. “Where’s the gun. I’ll do everything shall I…”